Hurrah, my MFW quest has started

StuartGMC

abouttimetoo wrote: »

Hi all

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas

Just a quick update (now where have you heard that before and then gone on to read war and peace:rolleyes: )

:o:o:o:o .... in my thread? :o:o:o

Now for a very shameful confession:o I've just worked something out that I should have done months ago and that is how much of my salary goes to a) the mortgage and b) all the bills. The confession wouldn't be as bad if it was just that I hadn't got around to doing it but it's actually far worse than that in that I hadn't even thought about doing it!!!!! (Stuart, I quite understand if this means that you send my thread to coventry and put me on an ignore list:rotfl: )

Well Coventry is not all that bad.... but I wouldn't ignore you ATT! It just shows how we can all get ideas from others here and then use them to help our planning and motivation. I usually only focus on the % vs. net salary.

The bit I'm really shocked by is where the h*ll has the rest of the money gone??????? Thank goodness I said last week that I planned to do a spending diary in January, however, I only said this mostly out of curiosity rather than thinking I had a big problem. I need to work things out carefully as roughly speaking I would say that 20% goes on holidays and eating out but that still leaves an awful lot unnaccounted for...

Try using the credit card only for all purchases and limit your cash purchases as much as possible. This will then help to get records of all the spends, plus don't forget the routine extras which come along (dentist etc).

Now feels like the time to have a proper rummage through Stuarts spreadsheet which I've been meaning to do all month and pinch the bits I need to add to my own [strike]baby[/strike] errm spreadsheet

Let me know if you spot any errors please
Best wishes for collating the data and to get that "feeling" of being in control again as I am sure it will soon become clear where the spend is going.

abouttimetoo

Well, I've just updated my signature although I'm still not doing the daily interest until next month when I get the mortgage statement in.

Since April I've made

• total OP's of £4900
• reduced the total mortgage by £6563
• repayment part now stands at £90,658.67
• interest only part now stands at £90,422.29
• total outstanding is £181,080.96

Although I exceeded my intial OP target by 181% I failed my two stretch targets of a) getting the IO to £90k and overall balance to £180k but this was due to changing the car:rolleyes: and I'm still pretty pleased with what I've achieved and can't wait for next year.

As mentioned in yesterdays post a spending diary is now an absolute must since working out that in January my % of mortgage payments v salary will be 23% and my gut feel is that I can more than double this but need to do some working out!

abouttimetoo

StuartGMC wrote: »

:o:o:o:o .... in my thread? :o:o:o

lol stuart, I did mean myself

Well Coventry is not all that bad.... but I wouldn't ignore you ATT! It just shows how we can all get ideas from others here and then use them to help our planning and motivation. I usually only focus on the % vs. net salary.

Yip! I'm definately going to be doing that from now on, I guess the reason I was so shocked is that i'm pretty frugal, my company pretty much keeps me in terms of bed & board, so food and utilities are minimal, I only do 2000 miles a year in the car and rarely buy things for myself so my instinct was that I was 'ok' just goes to show doesn't it

Try using the credit card only for all purchases and limit your cash purchases as much as possible. This will then help to get records of all the spends, plus don't forget the routine extras which come along (dentist etc).

I already do this, in fact would buy a 5p sweet (if I ate sweets) on my credit card so I have all the 'evidence' to hand. It's a rare occasion that I draw cash out for myself as always use corporate charge card if I need work cash

Let me know if you spot any errors please
Best wishes for collating the data and to get that "feeling" of being in control again as I am sure it will soon become clear where the spend is going.

Will do although I'm sure there won't be any lol, yes, I'm definately looking forward to regaining that feeling of control that I thought I already had!

PS, feeling very smug and pleased with self as I've just learned how to do more than one quote in a post:D

StuartGMC

ATT
Looking like it's all coming together.

LOL about the multiple quotes, but it is nice to "learn" a few new things a week.

Best wishes for 2009

abouttimetoo

Hi all

Just to report that my spending diary is now purchased (49p!) and I'm now writing everything down, albeit today is the first time this year that i've spent anything.

I've also added column to spreadsheet to track % of mortgage + OP v salary.
Can't wait to get cracking on this years OP's:j

setmefree2

and

abouttimetoo

setmefree2 wrote: »

and

Oooh, thanks SMF2, your clip art is becoming famous on here, you always find such original ones and seemingly also find them in seconds - on the rare occassion I need one it always seems to take hours - and then the ones I do find never seem to be just quite right - yours are always bang on:D

No real news apart from my spending diary continues, it's still only day 9 though so not much to report. I've got two lots of work expenses that I need to sort out and should hear what my pay rise is sometime in the next few weeks, actually, having said that I don't even know if I'm getting one:rolleyes:

This week a few colleagues that I haven't seen for about three months and one of them was telling me how he is now keeping his mortgage payments the same as they were before the reduction and aiming to OP another 5% - this is as a result of my mentioning what I'm doing, I was nearly as pleased for him as he was, it's funny how this OPthing fosters a warm feeling in us all isn't it...

abouttimetoo

Oops, I forgot to mention that it's been confirmed that my rate with effect from Februarys payment will be 1.5% and my BTL will be 3.5%. It's also been confirmed that should the base rate ever go to 0% then that is what C&G will charge me :j

abouttimetoo

Gulp, just signed up to the MFiT T2 challenge being started at the end of this year and being run by Financial Bliss and Maz123. I've already been doing the 2008 one that Bells Bells ran and the 2009 one that Zavarony is running but fancied this one as well...

I'm doing the T2 one (love the name- hope it doesnt end up like T5:rotfl: ) I'm going to do it on my interest only part and I've stated that

• start balance will be £80, 000
• target end balance to be £40, 000

So.... quite a bit of work to do ay

Just busy having a play with numbers following base rate change. I've got an awful lot I'd like to do this year in terms of re-building savings, paying back stooze money (although got another offer today....) making sure BTL reserve fund is ok and also seeing about OP'ing on BTL if funds allow and lots of hoping that the S&S pick up

abouttimetoo

see on the 11th April I had worked my daily interest as

• £14.21 on the repayment part
• £14.46 on the interest only part making a total of
• £28.67 (although at it's highest before I started OP’ing it was £29.30) [\quote]

I'm expecting the daily interest for February £3.72 (Repayment) and £3,70 making a total of £7.43, it's just unbelievable that it has dropped so much with rate changes :j


Gas
This is still not sorted out although they did call me today to say the end is in sight and will ring me next Friday, mind you they still didn't know how long it would be to resolve


Shares
Still not sorted although I received a letter more than two weeks ago saying they would reply in 10 days, I'm still waiting ....

BTL
With the rate change this payment will drop by £144.16, I'm going to save the money for a while to bring up reserves but I'm really hopeful of OP's on this sometime this year

Holiday March 09
Just paid £63 for the transfer that I'd forgotten about:rolleyes: